Realism Overhaul

[Zander]

For those using the earth size kerbin you definitely want to get an 8K kerbin retexture with universe replacer mod. It looks beautiful. (took my most powerful heavy munar shuttle to get a single man cm into kearth orbit with no fuel left for deorbiting)

[Starwaster]

Getting off RealEve is going to be be pretty ridiculous and going to the outer planets is going to take a very long time on max time acceleration...

All these worlds we give to you. Except Eve. Attempt no landings there.

[Guest]

Well, you can land. You just can't get back, which isn't a problem unless you send a manned expedition. In fact, landing an unmanned probe on Eve is easier than doing the same on Duna.

[AbeS]

Bug report: EVA on mun is slippery and you sink into the ground a little when not moving and you can't plant flags. Hope this helps somehow.

I landed on the mun and planted a flag, maybe it works sometimes?

[Starwaster]

Well, you can land. You just can't get back, which isn't a problem unless you send a manned expedition. In fact, landing an unmanned probe on Eve is easier than doing the same on Duna.

sigh, way to ruin my 2010 joke

[Starwaster]

anyone know about macs? trying to get into my macbook so I can resume playing. its pgp protected which password I remember but not my OS X login. there seem to be several password recovery options but I'm hesitantnto try them because of the encryption. am I hosed?

[NathanKell]

Macs? Eh. Pull the drive and use it in your PC.

Seriously, I have no real idea. Last time I used a Mac it was System 7. Sorry.

I'll check the Mun's period. It should be ok, but...

Oh, if only I had fewer part mods. Zander, that looks incredible!

Also, I'm trying to get rbray89's clouds and city lights mod to work (it looks amazing in stock KSP) but the sphere is coming out wrong. I'll keep people posted. With that, we needn't use the cloudy-Kerbin texture in UR.

[mic_e]

They're just much much less steep now.

But... that makes the game easier! Nooooooooooooooooo!

[ZRM]

Hey, very nice job. I've been wanting more realistic scales ever since I first tried the KSP demo. Just never got round to looking at how to do it.

I don't have the time to try this out at the moment (for at least a month), but when I do, I would be starting from a clean install, so which mods would anyone recommend to go with this? I haven't used many mods for quite a while since I got caught up in modding (I tend to stick to a clean install + the project I am working on to keep load times down), so I'm a bit out of touch. I guess MFS and FAR are almost a requirement for reaching orbit, along with Deadly Reentry for realsim, but what else is useful, and which particular version/patch/fork of each mod would you recommend?

Edited October 24, 2013 by ZRM

[AbeS]

@ZRM Procedural Fairings is a must with FAR (or any other fairing), and maybe some big rockets like KW.

[p3asant]

Lol i felt proud for getting one capsule to orbit with this on the first try

Shows how awesome this mod is .

Love it.

I presume the stretchable mods are with fixed fuel ratiors +twrs or so?

http://imgur.com/a/548EF

Damn here goes my nights sleep

Edited October 24, 2013 by p3asant

[NathanKell]

ZRM, good luck in the meanwhile!

As for mods (other than what you've cited) I use (all have been balanced for realism; the latest MFS has the configs):

AIES (Engines, Science, Utility, RCS)

Clouds and city lights

Crew Manifest

FASA for engines and Mercury/Gemini

Proc Fairings are a must as AbeS says

KW (the engines and solids only)

Mission Controller Extended, for realistic costs even if you don't fly the missions

My own handrolled addons (mini SRBs, mini probe RCS tank, some engine rescales to fill gaps, realism mods for other mods)

NovaPunch (Engines, solids, decouplers, LES, struts)

Procedural Wings

RLA Stockalikes for the engines are RCS

StretchyTanks (with my patch; handles all my tanks)

TAC Fuel Balancer (so you can easily use your service module's electric charge and hydrazine first, say)

TAC Life Support

Taverio's Pizza and Aerospace

EVA Parachutes and ejection module

You'll want KW and NP (with the MFS changes) for big engines and big solids (although Stretchy's SRB can do the latter). You'll want AIES and RLA for probe parts, since your probes will have to be much smaller compared to stock unless you want to launch them on the equivalent of a Titan-class LV.

Oh, and MechJeb for calculating TMIs and giving info. Ascent guidance does still work on Earthbin, btw, you just have to use way different values.

EDIT: p3asant, yup, see the MFS thread and the docs about v3 alpha. set useRealisticMass (or whatever) = true in your RealSettings.cfg and away you go.

[p3asant]

EDIT: p3asant, yup, see the MFS thread and the docs about v3 alpha. set useRealisticMass (or whatever) = true in your RealSettings.cfg and away you go.

Does this mean it overrides all engines, even of the mods that you didn't list (eg the 1:1 Rocketdyne F1 mod)?

[ZRM]

ZRM, good luck in the meanwhile!

As for mods (other than what you've cited) I use (all have been balanced for realism; the latest MFS has the configs):

AIES (Engines, Science, Utility, RCS)

Clouds and city lights

Crew Manifest

FASA for engines and Mercury/Gemini

Proc Fairings are a must as AbeS says

KW (the engines and solids only)

Mission Controller Extended, for realistic costs even if you don't fly the missions

My own handrolled addons (mini SRBs, mini probe RCS tank, some engine rescales to fill gaps, realism mods for other mods)

NovaPunch (Engines, solids, decouplers, LES, struts)

Procedural Wings

RLA Stockalikes for the engines are RCS

StretchyTanks (with my patch; handles all my tanks)

TAC Fuel Balancer (so you can easily use your service module's electric charge and hydrazine first, say)

TAC Life Support

Taverio's Pizza and Aerospace

EVA Parachutes and ejection module

You'll want KW and NP (with the MFS changes) for big engines and big solids (although Stretchy's SRB can do the latter). You'll want AIES and RLA for probe parts, since your probes will have to be much smaller compared to stock unless you want to launch them on the equivalent of a Titan-class LV.

Oh, and MechJeb for calculating TMIs and giving info. Ascent guidance does still work on Earthbin, btw, you just have to use way different values.

EDIT: p3asant, yup, see the MFS thread and the docs about v3 alpha. set useRealisticMass (or whatever) = true in your RealSettings.cfg and away you go.

Thanks! That list looks great, but B9 is noticeably absent. Is that just because you've yet to try Kearth-launched space planes (space planes, IMO, seem to be what B9 is geared towards)? Has anyone dared trying space planes with this yet? I know I will once I finally finish phase 1 of the Kerbin Mini Shuttle project.

Also, just a thought - what does MFS do for RCS? Some RL spacecraft (e.g. STS) use the same fuel for RCS and orbital propulsion, such as MMH/NTO.

[NathanKell]

p3asant: Sorry, you're quite right. It only works for engines that have been added.

But it's very simple to add a MFS module to an engine. Just copy one from a similar engine (type, techlevel), change the thrust and origMass values...

Or use the spreadsheet below.

ZRM: I haven't tried B9 yet; didn't have the memory. So MFS only has legacy support for it. With all these reductions, I'm planning to add it though.

MFS itself, not much. The real fuels addon, everything. As of my MFS Continued, it sets all supported engines to use an appropriate fuel mix, it adds most common real fuels (LF becomes kerosene, monopropellant UDMH, and it adds LOX, LH2, and NTO and MMH to allow for kerolox, hydrolox, and NTO/MMH hypergolic engines. You could also add NTO/MonoPropellant if you wanted Russian NTO/UDMH engines). It also classifies engine by type and tech level, so they have appropriate Isp and thrust-to-weight ratio, and allows you to change the tech level in game (to simulate the F-1 to F-1A upgrade, for instance.)

Legacy RealFuels engines will use either LF/Ox (as kerosene/H2O2), kerolox, or hydrolox, and don't support tech levels or realistic TWRs/Isps.

All v3 compatible engines, and their new values, can be viewed on a spreadsheet, and you can use it to roll your own configs and add new engines. See this post upthread.

Edited October 24, 2013 by NathanKell

[EuSouONumero345]

Where I can download this? The download comes with a bunch of other mods.

[NathanKell]

Uh, last I checked RealSolarSystem.zip has only 1 mod, and the only files are the single DLL and the source.

Zip: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/16v210v2vbwv3ov/nmInpsRZ1P

[EuSouONumero345]

Ok then, but when I downloaded and launched my whole new KW Rocketry rocket "Asparatron", it got so wobbly that exploded.

[Camacha]

This is already stacking up to be awesome. Guess it is about time to upgrade the video card to cope with larger textures (currently 1 GB) and create a dedicated bootdrive with Linux and the 64-bit version of KSP in order to use more RAM for all the mods.

Did I read correctly that the Kearth already has an inclination?

Maybe it is the placebo effect, but Kearth/Kerbin certainly feels a lot more like Earth in this picture. Truly a massive globe.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Camacha

[NathanKell]

The plane of the ecliptic is defined as 0 inclination for Earth, I thought. The Moon is certainly inclined.

Also: One more updated, and....Posted a new thread in Addon Showcase for this, since atmo is fixed and it seems stable enough to play with. Note that it still has the all the known issues (part wobble, spaceport afloat, etc.)

[NathanKell]

Daniel345, turn on unbreakable joints before you launch then turn them off once things stabilize. There will be wobble.

Also, try making real-life-like rockets (you're using FAR, right?)--they should wobble less than vegetables.

[Camacha]

Sorry, I am messing up my terminology. I guess it is getting a bit late. I meant the Earth axis tilt. Is that implemented, or going to be implemented?

Edited October 25, 2013 by Camacha

[ferram4]

I've noticed that part wobble is only truly bad for very large parts; I've never had a 1.25m diameter rocket break on the pad with this. I'm thinking that I might have a go at making a plugin to fix the joints between parts so they behave more realistic / sane and see if that helps.

I've looked into trying to get Kerbin tilted, but no success on my end.

[NathanKell]

Going to be, assuming I can find a way to make PQS use axial tilt. Not seeing it immediately.

[NathanKell]

ferram, that plugin would be heaven-sent!

I had a go too, as the above post says. Can do it in map view, obviously, and change the angle of rotation, but that would mess up the transition to PQS.